


See the Bells Up In the Sky

by mimesere



Series: Remedial Virtue [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Nonbinary Crowley (Good Omens), aziraphale has an existential crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 18:10:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20214073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimesere/pseuds/mimesere
Summary: Angels weren’t meant for small, selfish joys. They weren’t meant for change.





	See the Bells Up In the Sky

Crowley was late. 

Fashionably late, they'd call it[1], waving a hand and brushing aside such boring considerations as punctuality without apologies. They'd pay for the wine and dessert instead, the entrée if they were particularly tardy, appetizers if they'd said something that set Aziraphale off, which was often. It was a dance, the steps of which were as familiar as anything else had become over the long years of their acquaintance.

Aziraphale closed his eyes and sighed. Their friendship, he corrected himself. It was embarrassing how easily he fell into the habit of centuries despite wanting to stop. 

"I thought you said this place was transcendently mediocre," came Crowley's voice. "Fit only for making you realize how much a body could enjoy skipping a meal for a better one later."

Aziraphale opened his eyes. Crowley stood at the end of the table as if summoned[2], eyebrows raised, casual despite the waistcoat and jacket. The men around them – and it was men, mostly, expensively dressed in the type of suit Gabriel ruthlessly copied and failed to wear properly – granted Crowley the condescension of their disapproving looks before moving back to whatever business brought them here.

"Gabriel was quite fond of it for meetings," Aziraphale said after clearing his throat. He drummed his fingers on the portfolio in front of him. "When he wasn't bearding me in the shop."

"Was he now?" asked Crowley, caught somewhere between feigned disinterest and very real hostility. They looked around at the other tables and booths, noting their occupants; they glanced at the leatherbound folder under Aziraphale's restless fingers. "I didn't think he went in for eating."

"He didn't. Doesn't. He thinks it sullies the temple of his body." Crowley hadn't sat down; Aziraphale flushed in embarrassment. The restaurant really was nothing like what Aziraphale would have chosen for pleasure. The food was fine, if mostly dull; the wine list was middling at best; everything about it was calculated to cater to a clientele comprised of people more interested in contracts than in cuisine. It was entirely the reason Aziraphale had chosen it. "We can go somewhere else," he offered, second guessing every decision he'd made that day. 

"Aziraphale," said Crowley, carefully and painfully neutral to Aziraphale's ears, "is this a business meeting?"

It was.

"No," lied Aziraphale reflexively and winced. "I mean, yes. We don't have to stay here," he said again.

"Oh no," said Crowley, sliding in to the booth opposite Aziraphale. Their clothes changed as they did, like a flower blooming, until they were in something smart and tailored and black, relieved only by a scarlet pocket square at their chest[3]. "A business lunch. I haven't been on one of these since ah, what was it?"

"New York?" offered Aziraphale, who'd kept track of Crowley's absences and reported them to home office diligently. "Roundabout 30 years ago, I think."

"Nah, must've done one more recently. Some dot com in the 90s at least. One of those new disruptive startups, maybe." Aziraphale could hear the scorn dripping off the last bit. Crowley considered themself an expert in the art of upset and, if they were to be believed, some bastard was always coming round again with an idea to reinvent something that worked perfectly well. It had taken years and several interventions on his part before Aziraphale realized the deliberation with which Crowley dropped names.

Aziraphale had never asked what it was people thought Crowley did that got him those invitations. He was rather afraid Crowley would answer. Worse, he was afraid Crowley would answer truthfully.

Crowley snagged the wine list from beside Aziraphale's arm and flipped toward the middle. "This is an appalling selection." They sounded delighted.

"I didn't want to be distracted," said Aziraphale.

"Sorry?" asked Crowley, still looking through the list.

"By the food. I didn't want to be distracted."

Crowley looked at him then. The lighting in the restaurant didn't lend itself to making Crowley's eyes easier to see, but Aziraphale had had years to learn what it felt like to be the focus of their attention. They set the list back and folded their arms across the table, leaning forward, as far away from their habitual sprawl as Aziraphale had seen in what felt like forever.

"All right then," Crowley said after a long, long moment. "Let's hear it."

Aziraphale took a deep breath he didn't need and pushed the portfolio over to Crowley. "I would like to revisit the terms of The Arrangement."

* * *

The Arrangement as Aziraphale understood it circa 1350 or so:

  1. Neither party would interfere in the major works of the opposing party, unless requested. 
  2. Where reasonable and upon agreement from both parties, in situations where their respective home offices had assigned opposing works in the same place (which happened rather more frequently than coincidence would suggest), one party would perform both. 
  3. Both parties would provide a timely notification of global initiatives or relevant information from either home office[4]. 

It had stood, unchanged, for more than six hundred years. They'd amended it, of course; there had been any number of backroom deals that started with drinks in Aziraphale's back room and lasted the course of a local war or cooperation in support of one of those clever things humanity chased after, but the foundation was solid and the two of them had built something lovely with it.

In the wake of the world's continued existence and their subsequent unemployment, it was also entirely irrelevant.

* * *

Crowley hummed to themself as they went through the paperwork. Ten minutes in they asked, "Do you mind if I?" and proceeded to manifest a fountain pen to make notes on the margins of the pages without waiting for an answer.

* * *

It took two months after the world didn't end for Aziraphale to finish redoing his cataloging system to incorporate Adam's additions to his stock and an additional month after that to expand upon that addition to include more than just boy's own fiction. After that, he'd taken another month to familiarize himself with the changes that Adam had wrought across reality.

And after that, he spent a week drinking himself out of an existential crisis while Crowley watched over him and the store.

It was terrifying. He was terrified. Crowley was entirely unhelpful.

"Well he hasn't changed _you_ you," Crowley said, picking up a stack of books next to the till. They'd managed to offend no fewer than five customers into storming out of the shop without their purchases. While Aziraphale wasn't overly fond of the methods – Crowley was rather more comfortable with outright hostility and insult than Aziraphale tended to be – he couldn't fault the success rate. "Only changed your, er, citizenship."

"I'm not supposed to change at all!" cried Aziraphale.

Crowley shrugged. They'd taken to Adam's changes with rather more aplomb than Aziraphale was managing and was expanding upon them in small, not entirely superficial ways: a change of hair one day; an entirely too distracting addition of lipstick another; the redistribution of assets on yet another; all of them separately and in combination. And through it all, the familiar eyes and louche manner remained, a balm. "Of course you've changed," they said dismissively.

Aziraphale glared at them. He wanted to criticize Crowley's re-shelving of the books and couldn't, put out by Crowley's easy familiarity with Aziraphale's methods. He also wanted to tell Crowley to sit down, that Crowley's constant restless prowling whenever they were in the store was unsettling. Mainly what he wanted things to be generally as they had been before the world didn't end. Albeit with a little less paranoia on their parts and more freedom of association. 

What he didn't want was the suspicion that he'd been remade in the wake of Adam's repudiation of the Great Plan. "I have not."

"You have," Crowley insisted. "We all have."

"No," said Aziraphale. "We aren't—we were _made_, Crowley. We aren't like them. Nurture doesn't change us."

Crowley scoffed. "Please. You know better. And if you were to go back and talk to yourself outside the ark, do you really think you'd stand around letting it all happen again?"

"Those were different circumstances," said Aziraphale. He tried quite hard not to think about the flood. Or Egypt. Or Babel. Or Sodom and Gomorrah. He rather resented Crowley for bringing it up at all. 

"It's a matter of scale," Crowley retorted. "Same idea. Different you." 

Perhaps, he thought, remembering the heft of the witchfinder musket in his hands. Not so different as all that.

"I don't know," said Aziraphale, sulking and fretful. He couldn't have changed and not know it had happened. "I don't feel different."

Doubt. Aziraphale loathed it. 

"We wouldn't, would we?" asked Crowley. They sounded unbothered by the possibility. "Not if he'd changed things back far enough." 

"I don't think an eleven year old—"

Crowley took a deep breath and began counting off titles on their fingers. "The Antichrist. Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is—"

"Adam," interrupted Aziraphale, rather testily. "I don't think Adam could have unmade God's work."

"That was the point of him, though. That's what he was made for."

"For humans," said Aziraphale, very, very certain that this was a terrible argument. "The world."

"Sure of that, are you?" asked Crowley.

"No," said Aziraphale. "I'm not sure of anything. That's the problem."

It was one of the problems, anyway.

"Doesn't it worry you," he finally asked, slumping enough into the couch that he could tip his head back and look up at the answerless ceiling. "That all the—all the work you put in, everything you did, that it may have been undone?"

Crowley dropped onto the sofa next to Aziraphale, close enough that their knees knocked together and the dip under Crowley's weight tipped them closer. "No. Might've gotten a boost, though. And even if it was, we know what to do now."

We again.

The crux of it was the we. There they were, the two of them, and one of them had changed. Had embraced change with all of their being. What was the fall if not a consuming change, intended or no? How could Aziraphale not acknowledge Crowley's determined construction of themself as an evolution? 

But you were made to change, Aziraphale almost said. It must be that, he wanted to say. I can't, whispered the exhausted, quiet heart of him. 

He wasn't meant to hand over the sword that became War. He wasn't meant for sushi or books or wine or crepes or ice cream. He wasn't meant for picnics or cocoa or lunches at the Ritz. Or Bach or dancing or properly tailored clothes or defying the Great Plan or Shakespeare. Aziraphale was quite certain he was never meant to befriend a demon. And yet, there Crowley was, exasperated and dear and impatient, picking idly at a threadbare spot on the sofa cushion.

Aziraphale stopped resisting the pull of gravity and slouched down further, feeling scoured and hollowed out. Daring, he rested his head against Crowley's shoulder. "New cologne?" he asked.

"Thought I'd try something different," Crowley said, all coiled stillness next to him. 

"I like it," said Aziraphale, smiling, and felt Crowley relax. He held out his hand and after a moment Crowley slipped their sunglasses onto Aziraphale's palm. 

Angels weren't meant for small, selfish joys. They weren't meant for change. 

Aziraphale sat in his store surrounded by an abundance of both and chose.

* * *

Finally, Crowley sat back and just looked at him, twirling the fountain pen in their long fingers. There was new writing in Crowley's tidy hand[5] all over the pages of Aziraphale's proposal. "This isn't a changing of terms, angel. This is a new agreement entirely."

"Yes," said Aziraphale. Page one was The Arrangement as it stood. Pages two through forty were the new proposal. "If we are to be free agents, we should know what that means."

"You want us to work when we've spent the last thousand years doing our best to avoid it." Crowley pointed out.

"You've been complaining about boredom since 1986," Aziraphale countered.

"You want us to thwart Heaven and Hell," Crowley said. "The two of us against twenty million angels and demons."

"The two of us and the world," corrected Aziraphale. He leaned forward and took Crowley's hand in his own. "You said it was going to be all of us against all of them. I like our odds. Don't you?"

Crowley's tongue flickered out as they considered Aziraphale thoughtfully. Perhaps he had laid it on a bit thick. "You bastard," they said, starting to laugh, the full throated delight from a park bench in the sun, giddy at having come out on top. Other restaurant patrons turned to look and Aziraphale didn't care at all. "You're tempting me."

"Is it working?"

"Of course it is," Crowley said. "I'm easy."

* * *

1One of Crowley’s better ideas. The report noted that it served to promote vanity, irritated others, and induced in some a near apoplectic rage at the disrespect for their time. Just about everyone walked away tarnished to some degree, including the people who didn’t care much about the goings on of others and were just there for the free drinks. [return to text]

2In the old days, if Aziraphale had needed to speak to Crowley and they weren’t within reasonable distance for a messenger or a quick trip, he’d trot out the summoning circle and rituals and candles and whatnot, bring Crowley to him, they’d discuss business and have a few drinks, and Aziraphale would banish them back to whatever they’d been doing. Now, they use the phone. It was agreed on both sides that this was infinitely more convenient if somewhat lacking in drama. Crowley had come up with the list of covert meeting places as a substitute. [return to text]

3There was an A embroidered into the corner of the pocket square, picked out neatly in gold thread. Crowley had been wearing some variation on it since 1850 and Aziraphale was constantly torn between appreciation for the keenness of the allusion and the sneaking suspicion that his appreciation for it rather missed the point. Or was the point. He was never entirely sure. [return to text]

4They’d added that last one after the Black Death reached England and gotten Crowley discorporated twice. [return to text]

5Crowley had picked up penbeingship long after Aziraphale had and it showed in their preference for the sinuousness of copperplate. Aziraphale’s own writing tended toward the letterforms of his monastery scribe days.[return to text]


End file.
